Sunset for the baby boomers

Sunset for the baby boomers

http://www.macaudailytimes.com.mo/times-lab/4719-Sunset-for-the-baby-boomers.html

14/10/2009
Michael Share

This summer, baby boomers, children of the 1960s, faced their own
mortality for the first time. Several well-known American figures,
boomer icons, from a wide variety of fields, passed away. Among
them: Walter Cronkite, who read the television news for tens of
millions of Americans for over two decades died at age 92; Michael
Jackson, "the King of Pop", to whose songs, albums, and videos
millions danced and sang; Farrah Fawcett, an actress, who at the
height of her career thirty years ago represented the preultimate of
female beauty; actor Patrick Swayze, one of the best dancers on the
big screen immortalized in the films "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost",
both very popular among boomers; Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy, the
last of the three great brothers (the others were Robert and John),
who collectively symbolized America's Camelot­youth and the future;
Conservative columnists and television personalities, William Safire
and Robert Novak, who both raged against the 1960s counter-culture,
and crucial for conservatism in today's America, both passed away in
their late 70s; and just a few weeks ago, Mary Travers from the
famous folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, whose songs young people
during the 1960s sang at Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War
marches. Some of these people died youngish in their 50s and 60s,
and were themselves children of the 60s. Others, especially Kennedy
and Cronkite, lived full lives and became inspirations to the
boomers. While men and women have always passed away during summers,
never was there a summer like this, one which impacted so much on a
certain group as this one did.
When World War II ended in 1945, millions of soldiers returned home,
and rejoined their wives and families. Naturally, after several
years' long absence, birth rates soared during the next subsequent
years. The products, called "baby boomers" attended universities
during the late 1960s and 1970s. They shaped pop music combining it
with "rthymn and blues" and folk into a new direction, all brought
together in outdoor music festivals, such as Woodstock, which I wrote
about a few weeks ago. During 1968 as students, millions of
boomers marched in the streets of New York, Boston, London, Paris,
Mexico City, Prague, Rome, and Washington, DC, demanding fundamental
reforms in their university education, reforms in their governments,
civil rights for their minorities, and generally by all, opposition
to the American War in Vietnam. Their pressure brought about
fundamental changes­politically, economically, educationally,
socially, culturally, as well as a reversal of the escalating
American War in Vietnam. Czechoslovakia had a short-lived democratic
Communist government in a celebrated "Prague Spring", sadly shattered
by Soviet tanks in August. France had a new republic, its fifth,
also pledged to introduce reforms. Everywhere, ruling structures
were shaken by these baby boomers.
Then during the 1970s these same baby boomers entered the work force
inducing changes in companies around the world­introducing new
products, such as computers, mobile phones, and other electronic
products we take for granted today, as well as introducing new work
rules, immortalized at Steve Job's Apple Corporation or Richard
Branson's Virgin Airlines. A decade later the boomers entered
board-rooms and other controlling sectors of business, government,
communications, and education, implementing in all these diverse area
their ideals and hopes. By the 1990s, baby boomers, epitomized by
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the US, and Tony Blair in Britain,
commanded the seats of power in their countries. During the past
forty years these "armies of the night" as the noted author Norman
Mailer called the boomers have shaped the lives and worlds of all
around them.
Yet now the boomers are entering their sixties, and beginning to
retire. On the basis of their previous years, we know that they will
shape retirement, which will be far more lively and notable than
prior "golden years". Yet, for the first time, this summer with the
deaths of their idols and comrades, the baby boomers have tasted
mortality. It is their children, such as Barack Obama in the United
States and Dmitri Medvedev in Russia, who are now leading their
countries. The baby boomers must understand the world is marching
past them. Sadly, a generation, which has done so much to transform
our world, is entering its sunset years.

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